My personal opinion is that it'll arrive on either February 5th or the 12th. I have no basis for this other than some baseless broad assumption of it possibly coming close to, and before the Valentines event.

So you think it could be released in 6 days?

Even in 13 days would be an absurd prediction. There's still a shite-load of raid testing to do, and plenty of things to tidy up on the islands, not to mention numerous other little things such as reputation rewards, drops and loads of other things that I don't have time to list.

March? That would be horrible... Season 12 longer than 5 months? =( They rly need to end this quick! Unfortunately i bought the diablo 3 + 1 year wow deal...otherwise i could freeze my abo for the rest of s12...(sry for whining)
But you are right. They can't just say that this season ends next week so march seems realistic =(

be glad it's so quick. Next content patch is probably not before the very end of the year. We all know how Blizzard operates by now. Just look at the content drought towards the end of every expansion. Because doing the same repetitive stuff for close to 1 year is fun and exciting and totally worth the sub fee.

You have not even tried the encounters. What do you base the claims about their difficulty on?

The public statistics showing how many guilds are downing the bosses.

---------- Post added 2013-01-30 at 02:31 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Zenko

I respect your opinion and your vision of the game.

But, you are asking to undo a decade of game development, philosophy, and community to fundamentally change WoW into something that it isn't.

The issue of end game design has festered in WoW for years. Something has kept the developers focusing on a tiny fraction of their players. You can tell they weren't really happy with how it was evolving, because they kept trying to tweak the end game design. I think they WANT people to want hard, challenging content, but the vast majority of their customers have refused to change their minds.

Some exec at Activision-Blizzard needs to have a group sit down and estimate how much this vain focus on "vision" has cost the company. I suspect the answer is in the billions of dollars.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

Some exec at Activision-Blizzard needs to have a group sit down and estimate how much this vain focus on "vision" has cost the company. I suspect the answer is in the billions of dollars.

What are you doing on this forum ? I mean, you are a financial genius who can save BILLIONS to some shareolders ! You should be hired by Activision, EA, Trion or every other big MMO company to show them the light...

Which are not a reliable basis for claiming that they are on a difficulty level that you do not enjoy. They can be used for analysis but one can't draw extensive conclusions based on them alone; doing so would be quite ignorant.

Blizzard has been using a method to releasing patches. The best way to know is by raid fights on the PTR. Right now they haven't tested the Heroic fights but I know they will this month. Usually right after about a week or so, the patch will be released. Blizzard has also been using the 'end of the month' releasing method. Releasing a patch at the last Tuesday of the month. But rarely they'll use the first Tuesday of the month. So by looking where they are now, I would say February 26th or March 5th

Not saying this will be the dates. But if you need a source here it is for the last two expansions:

I cried alone every single night. It felt like every day that passed here stole another piece of my real life away. After i cried, I’d go and fight as hard as I could. My only thought was winning, moving forward, and getting stronger. — Asuna Yuuki

Which are not a reliable basis for claiming that they are on a difficulty level that you do not enjoy.

Actually, it is, since I can correlate how raiders are doing on content with how they were doing on past content that I did participate in.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

I'm hoping it's soon, and that most people who were trying to raid in normal mode give up in disgust. The devs at Blizzard who think difficulty and complexity are good for the game need some stern discipline.

So because you and your friends lack skill to raid you want blizzard to remove raiding? Thats why they implemented LFR.

So because you and your friends lack skill to raid you want blizzard to remove raiding? Thats why they implemented LFR.

The higher raiding modes are still distorting the game (witness the effect the huge spread of gear had on PvP this season). Regardless of whether I am skilled or not, or have skilled friends or not, the higher raid modes do nothing positive for my game experience. And, judging by participation, getting into those higher raiding modes is the exceptional reaction, not mine.

I am wondering if Blizzard is conducting an experiment this tier, trying to figure out, once and for all, what kind of PvE people like. If that's the case, I want the result of the experiment to tell them that (non-LFR) raiding's importance has been greatly overestimated. People aren't staying out of organized, challenging raiding because of roadblocks. They're staying out because they just don't like it.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

The higher raiding modes are still distorting the game (witness the effect the huge spread of gear had on PvP this season). Regardless of whether I am skilled or not, or have skilled friends or not, the higher raid modes do nothing positive for my game experience. And, judging by participation, getting into those higher raiding modes is the exceptional reaction, not mine.

I am wondering if Blizzard is conducting an experiment this tier, trying to figure out, once and for all, what kind of PvE people like. If that's the case, I want the result of the experiment to tell them that (non-LFR) raiding's importance has been greatly overestimated. People aren't staying out of organized, challenging raiding because of roadblocks. They're staying out because they just don't like it.

And vice-versa the PvP screws PvE experience. And I dont care about PvP , I wish they would remove it the same way you wish they would remove raids, so whos now right and whos wrong? No one.

And about the raid difficulty. You obvously havent played in vanilla and TBC, raids are more accesible and easier nowadays.
Blizzard does not need to conduct any experiment, people like different kinds of PvE. And there always will be QQers who cant just handle the difficulty of harder content, its theyr own problem. Why to punish those who can handle it?

It's a good thing people who don't do normal raids have so much LFR content to keep them busy these days. I know people who like to raid normal/heroic and they're raiding normal/heroic. I know people who prefer to just do LFR casually and they just do LFR casually. Don't really see the issue here.

Always tons of people LFM/LFG for normal/heroic raids in chat.

Really the only place I've come across this outcry to nerf normal modes is here on this forum and from Osmeric specifically. Have not come across this sentiment anywhere else. I mean I'm over ilvl 480 on 3 characters now. They're actually a little overgeared for normal MV if I wanted to do it. If you can't clear normal MV at this point with a raid full of 480's, then I'm not sure how much nerfing you need to be satisfied. If you didn't notice already, the first tier of an expansion does not gets nerfs like DS did. It will automatically get nerfed as more higher end gear gets distributed to the playerbase.

And about the raid difficulty. You obvously havent played in vanilla and TBC, raids are more accesible and easier nowadays.

I did play in Vanilla and BC. My experience in BC convinced me that that mode of raiding wasn't for me. When they tried to go back to it in Cataclysm, I left the game for most of 2011.

Blizzard does not need to conduct any experiment, people like different kinds of of PvE. And there always will be QQers who cant just handle the difficulty of harder content, its theyr own problem. Why to punish those who can handle it?

Of course Blizzard needs to do experiments. Their preconceptions about what people want are often very wrong, as Cataclysm demonstrated. Empirical data is how they rectify those mistakes.

Also: it's not a matter of punishment. It's a matter of cutting off tiny segments of the customer base if they end up not being worthwhile to support. Raiders could be the most decent folks aroud, but if there aren't enough of them then they get thrown under the bus. Being a better player doesn't define one to be a more preferred customer.

---------- Post added 2013-01-30 at 05:33 PM ----------

Originally Posted by wow1912

Leave it to Osmeric to turn a thread about the timing of the next patch into the ways the Blizzard doesn't cater to him.

The people I am responding to (including you!) also share responsibility for the direction the thread has gone in. It takes two (or more) to tango.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson